Chapter 13
Lev
Ileave her barricaded in my room with my duvet on the floor and enough fear in her eyes to haunt a better man.
Good thing I’m not one.
The door shuts behind me, and I stand in the corridor for a second with my jaw tight, trying to decide whether I’ve just made things better or much worse.
Pyotr looks up from the hall below when I come down, dressed in black pants and a dark shirt, sleeves rolled up. He says nothing at first. He just takes in my face, then the keys in my hand.
“I’m going out,” I tell him. “She stays upstairs. She does not leave the room.”
His expression doesn’t change. “Understood.”
“If she asks for food, she gets it. If she asks for a phone, she doesn’t. If she throws something at you, dodge it. Check on her in an hour, and then every half an hour after that for as long as I’m gone.”
“And if she asks where you are?”
“You don’t know.”
He nods once, and I leave him to it as I head outside.
The morning air is already warm and humid. London is awake and pretending to be respectable again.
I get in the Ferrari and pull out through the gates with too much force, tyres biting hard. My mind is still upstairs, in my room, in that corner behind the chair where she looked at me like I was the devil and the only shelter she had in the same breath.
It’s like a bullet that missed everything important.
I should’ve kept my fucking mouth shut.
Telling her I’d kill for her wasn’t comforting to a woman like that. It was the sort of thing men like me understand as reassurance. Problem solved. Threat removed. Safety restored.
To her, it is just one more man deciding violence is the answer to her life.
I drum my thumbs against the wheel at a red light and check the mirrors out of habit. No tails that I can see. No bike hanging back too long. No blacked-out saloon keeping pace through turns. Still, I take two unnecessary diversions before I head towards Kensington.
If someone’s watching her flat, I want to see them before they see me.
By the time I pull onto her street, I’m all the way back in work mode. The obsession gets boxed up. Locked down. Useful, but not in charge.
I don’t park directly outside her building.
I pull up half a street away, kill the engine, and sit for a minute with my forearms resting on the wheel, studying the road.
Two parked SUVs. One plumber’s van. An old woman walking a terrier that looks offended by life.
No obvious watchers. I get out and walk the rest of the way, dark sunglasses on, expression blank enough that nobody pays me any mind.
I pull out a lock-picking set and glance casually around before I pick the lock on the front door in under three seconds and slip inside, pocketing the set. I take the stairs quickly, stop outside her flat, and listen.
Nothing.
No movement inside. No television. No footsteps inside. No idiot waiting in the shadows with a gun.
I pick open the door and slip in, closing it quietly behind me.
Her place is exactly what I expected from the bits I already know.
Small. Neat without being sterile. Books shoved wherever they fit.
A sofa that looks chosen, not the first thing she could afford.
The curtains are drawn, and it feels like her in the way a place carries a person’s habits.
Controlled. Tense. Built around survival and routine.
I move through the flat to her bedroom and search for a suitcase or a bag to put her things in.
I find a hard-shell carry-on in dark green, scratched at one corner, practical and compact under the bed. I drag it out, set it on the duvet, and unzip it.
I head to the wardrobe and start pulling things together. Jeans, leggings, joggers, and t-shirts that are hung up instead of folded. A few jumpers and a hoodie.
The drawers give me socks and underwear that I have no business looking at and look at anyway because I’m a bastard and because picturing her in every scrap of fabric I touch is now apparently one of my many defects. I force myself to move faster.
This is logistics. Not fantasy.
I take toiletries from the bathroom next. Make-up bag. Hairbrush. Skin care lined up. Prescription on the shelf. Sleeping tablets, barely touched. I put them in the wash bag and keep going. Toothbrush, toothpaste, tampons, painkillers, deodorant.
I grab a pair of flip-flops, slippers and trainers and throw them in the case. I zip it up and grab it off the bed, moving quickly.
Opening the door, I step out into the hallway and close it behind me, making sure it’s locked.
I get three steps towards the stairs before I hear footsteps coming up the stairs, quickly, steadily. Heavily.
Male.
My hand immediately goes to the gun on my left side, under my jacket.
I wait as he thuds up the stairs and spot him before he sees me. Dark hair, dark glasses, dark suit. This entire attitude screams thug, not professional.
He hits the landing and finally sees me.
His hand goes inside his jacket.
I’ve already levelled my Glock at him.
“Don’t,” I say.
He freezes for half a beat, then gives me a thin smile that does fuck-all to improve his face. “This is a private building.”
“I’m aware.”
His eyes drop to the suitcase in my hand, then back to me. He is trying to place me. He settles on trouble, which is the first intelligent thing about him.
He shifts his weight and angles his body just enough to make a draw easier. Amateur. He has the instincts, not the discipline.
“You’re not getting past me, so you might as well turn around and go back to your boss. Tell them, Lev Voronov has the girl and the drive. If they want either that badly, they’ll know where to find me.”
For one second, the hallway quiets.
Then he smiles a little wider, and I know he’s stupid enough to think drawing on me is worth a try.
I drop the case and pull my blade before he’s even finished his thought. I don’t waste much time aiming, I let the knife fly towards him, and it buries in his shoulder. He hisses, and his hand goes to it, forgetting about his gun for a moment.
“I’m not going to shoot you unless you do something stupid. This is a private building in London. It’ll cause more shit than I want.”
I move forward in two strides and clamp my hand around the hilt of my blade. I twist it. He staggers back, his face going paler. He grunts when I yank it out. “Run along. You’ve got the message.”
He glares at me, clutching his shoulder, blood working through his fingers.
“You’re fucking dead,” he bites out.
I smile at him because men like this deserve disrespect. “Not the first time I’ve heard that today, won’t be the last.”
He backs down the stairs with murder in his eyes, and common sense finally kicks in, which is a relief. I’d rather not leave a corpse in Varvara’s building if I can help it. Too many questions. Too much police attention. Too much risk that her name ends up on a report somewhere it shouldn’t.
I wait until I hear the front door slam below before I pull out a black handkerchief and wrap the blade in it, before stashing it in my jacket.
Both are ruined. I don’t care about either of them.
I pick up the case again and head down after him at a calmer pace.
No rush. If he’s still outside, I’ll see him.
He’s gone.
I step onto the pavement, bag in hand. The street looks the same as when I arrived. Nice cars. Money. Respectability. But now I know her building has already been approached.
That changes things.
I load the case into the boot and get behind the wheel, pulling away without hurry. I take three turns, then four more, constantly checking the mirrors.
No tail.
The Voronov name has given them pause. They know they fucked up, they know Varvara is now under my protection. They need to regroup and come at this from a different angle.
The gates to my Mayfair mansion open, and I pull into the driveway, waiting for them to close behind me before I get out.
I move around to the boot and grab the case.
I wanted to go to the club to see if I could bully someone into giving me information about this blonde prick who started all this, but the need to get back to Varvara overrode that.
It can wait until later. I head inside and take the stairs up to the first floor.
Unlocking the door, I open it and step inside, my gaze cutting around the room quickly.
Varvara is still behind the armchair, wrapped up in the duvet.
She lifts her head when she sees the case in my hand, and her expression changes at once. Suspicion. Defiance. Fear tucked in underneath both.
“Going somewhere?” she asks, voice rough with sleep or crying. Hard to tell which.
“I got your things.”
Her eyes flick to the suitcase, then back to me. “You broke into my flat.”
I shut the door behind me and lock it again. “I did.”
“You are such a dick.”
“That has never been in dispute.”
I set the case down at the end of the bed. “You can unpack it later. If I forgot anything, I can go back. But know you are not. I ran into someone sent there to kill you earlier.” My point is to nail home to her that she is in danger because I just don’t think she gets it.
Her expression shifts from defiant to something else. She swallows hard, and her fingers tighten around the edge of the duvet.
“Someone was there?” Her voice comes out quieter than before. “At my flat?”
“Yes. I dealt with it.”
“Dealt with it.” She repeats it flatly. “What does that mean?”
I move closer, stopping a few feet from her makeshift shelter. “It means I made it clear who you’re under the protection of now, and he left with a message for his boss.”
“Did you kill him?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
The question catches me off guard. “Why not? That sounds awfully like an accusation, moya sladkaya. But bodies in nice buildings bring police attention, and that would’ve complicated your life more than it already is.
If I come across him in a dark alley or a quiet park, he will want to rethink his life choices. ”
She stares at me for a beat, processing. Then she pushes the duvet aside and gets to her feet. My tee rides up slightly as she moves, and I force my eyes back to her face.
“You let him walk?”
“I let him walk as a victim of a stabbing.”
Her eyes darken with approval for a second before it disappears. She is darker than she wants to admit. It does absolutely nothing to squash this growing obsession with her.
“So they know where I live. They know I’m with you. What happens now?” she asks.
“Now they decide if coming after you is worth the cost.”
“And if they decide it is?”
I hold her stare and don’t blink. “Then I kill them all.”
She gasps. I watch her throat work as she swallows. Her expression shifts. It’s harder. It’s survival mode as opposed to the fear response that lives under her skin.
“You say that like it’s easy.”
“It is easy. Finding them first is the annoying part.”
She moves past me towards the suitcase, and I catch the scent of my shower gel on her skin. I look back at the door I just came through and stay there for a moment before turning my attention back to her.
“I need to change,” she says without looking at me.
I nod towards the bathroom. “Go ahead.”
She drags the case off the bed and wheels it across the floor. The bathroom door closes behind her with a firm click, and I’m left standing in the middle of my bedroom with too much adrenaline and not enough outlet for it.